Depressing and disappointing that Vinoo Mankad’s name is being tarnished: Sunil Gavaskar

Sunil Gavaskar has slammed the usage of Vinoo Mankad's name to refer to the polarising act of a bowler running out a non-striker.

Sunil Gavaskar has slammed the usage of Vinoo Mankad‘s name to refer to the polarising act of a bowler running out a non-striker.

The term ‘Mankading’ is used to refer to this act as it was the Indian legend who first effected the run-out of Australian Bill Brown in the manner. Despite receiving repeated warnings from Mankad, Brown continued to back up out of his crease resulting in his dismissal.

Since then, whenever a non-striker is run out by a bowler who backs out of his delivery stride midway, the batsman is termed to have been ‘Mankaded’.

“Just because over 70 years back a lazy foreign journalist called a run-out of Bill Brown the Australian non-striker for backing up out of his crease by Vinoo Mankad as being ‘Mankaded’ the term has stuck,” Gavaskar wrote in his column for The Times of India on Saturday.

He added, “That Brown had been warned more than once by Mankad and still continued to transgress was overlooked and even after Sir Don Brahman found nothing wrong in Vinoo Mankad’s action the media called it Mankaded.”

Gavaskar says it’s depressing that the name of a former India cricketer is being tarnished, calling it as lack of respect. “It really has been depressing and disappointing reading the Indian media over the last few days. The lack of respect shown to an Indian legend and referring the run-out by a bowler as ‘Mankad’ is indeed very sad,” he wrote.

More recently, the controversial dismissal made waves during the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) when Kings XI Punjab’s Ravichandran Ashwin dismissed Rajasthan Royals Jos Buttler in that fashion.

Such was the debate that Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) had to come out with multiple explanations of what it thought of the dismissal. First MCC supported the act but later made a U-turn saying it was against the spirit of the game.

“Does a batsman who stays at the crease despite knowing he has nicked the ball ever referred to as doing a WG (Grace) after a legendary batsman of yore? Is a fielder who claims a catch when the ball has bounced before settling in his palms ever called doing a Waugh after the former skipper ‘caught’ Brian Lara in the West Indies? Then why pray is a run-out of the non-striker backing out of his crease called Mankad?” Gavasakar questioned.

Gavaskar, who is the first batsman in Test history to score 10,000 runs, has urged the Indian media to refer the dismissal as ‘Browned’ rather than ‘Mankaded’.

“Hopefully at least the Indian media will henceforth refer it as Browned after the Australian who was the one at fault or simply refer to it as ‘run-out by the bowler’ instead of tarnishing a legend’s name,” he said.